Gun Companies Gave Customers’ Sensitive Personal Information to Political Operatives
Gun Companies Gave Customers’ Sensitive Personal Information to Political Operatives
At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington and Mossberg, secretly handed over names, addresses and other data to lobbyists, who used the details to rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians.
Those operatives, in turn, secretly employed the details to rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians running for Congress and the White House, a ProPublica investigation has found.
The clandestine sharing of gun buyers’ identities — without their knowledge and consent — marked a significant departure for an industry that has long prided itself on thwarting efforts to track who owns firearms in America.
At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington, Marlin and Mossberg, handed over names, addresses and other private data to the gun industry’s chief lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NSSF then entered the gun owners’ details into what would become a massive database.
The clandestine sharing of gun buyers’ identities — without their knowledge and consent — marked a significant departure for an industry that has long prided itself on thwarting efforts to track who owns firearms in America.
I was going to mention exactly this, but it seems the article already beat me to it.
We need a HIPAA for regular data.
The EU has such, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), works reasonably well. Pretty good place to start.
Depending on the type of data and where you live, you can have some of its benefits.
There's FERPA for student data.
Credit card companies require very strict controls over their data, and how charges are made and encrypted.
I'm Europe there is the GDPR, which grants a right to remove your data from a particular site, among other protections. Some US states have followed with lesser versions, like California, Colorado, and Virginia.
I don't think you want HIPAA-level data protections over normal data, because it's a passion in the ass to have that level of restrictiveness over mere ordinary data. It costs a lot to protect it - you'd need documented written permissions on every aspect of your data.
For years I've argued that the gun lobby is for manufacturers, not owners. This is a concrete example of them prioritizing the former over the latter.
Something tells me gun nuts will waive away the violation of privacy that gun companies sharing gun purchasing into with government officials represents.
We need good guys with boots to tread on me to stop bad guys with boots!
